Bigotry Determined Webster’s New
World Dictionary defines “bigot” as “a person who holds blindly and
intolerantly to a particular creed, opinion, etc.” and “bigotry” as “the
behavior, attitude, or beliefs of a bigot.”

Police State Thomas Kachadurian’s column might get the facts right but misses the story.

Oppose The Shell Game Is this a
Shell Game? As a Democrat, I support increased taxes on motor fuels and
vehicles to provide funding for our transportation infrastructure.

Sugars On The Way Senator Patrick
Colbeck from Canton introduced a bill and the Senate passed it allowing
schools and Girl & Boy Scout troops to have up to 3 bake sales per
week.

Three cups of uproar

Three Cups of UproarA tempest in a teapot for humanitarian Greg MortensonWhen it comes right down to it I am nothing more than a fellow who took awrong turn in the mountains and never quite managed to find his way home.

-- Greg Mortenson, Stones into Schools

Is author and adventurer Greg Mortenson -- who wrote Three Cups of Tea --an outrageous liar or just a good-hearted humanitarian who happens to havereally sloppy business practices?It depends on who you ask.In recent weeks Mortenson has been roasted as an imposter and a scoundrelby journalist Jon Krakauer and 60 Minutes.Krakauer has published a 75-page e-book exposé called Three Cups of Deceit($2.99 on Amazons Kindle), which goes into excruciating detail aboutMortenson and his claim to have built over 170 schools in some of the mostdangerous parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan, helping to educate more than68,000 students.Turns out there may be only half a cup of truth to Mortensons story.Some background: Mortensons book, Three Cups of Tea, has roosted for fiveyears on the New York Times bestseller list, with his follow-up, Stonesinto Schools, close behind. His Central Asia Institute (CAI) has raisedmore than $50 million in donations to build schools overseas. PresidentObama gave the charity $100,000 of his own Nobel Peace Prize money andkids all over the world have sent thousands via Pennies for Peace.Closer to home, Mortenson got a heros welcome in Traverse City inJanuary, 2009, when supporters raised $40,000 for his charity. One womaneven left a $1,000 check in the penny pot, according to a news account.And his work perhaps served as an inspiration for the local On the Groundproject which recently raised funds for schools in Ethiopia.But as 60 Minutes revealed, only 41% of the money raised by Mortensonscharity has gone into building schools in Central Asia. And in Krakauersbook, its claimed that Mortenson has misused millions of dollars donatedby schoolchildren and other trusting devotees.Greg, says a former treasurer of the charity, regards CAI as hispersonal ATM.On the other hand, Sally Stilwill, an educational consultant who organizedthe event that brought Mortenson to TC, says shes met the author onseveral occasions and has been to his home and CAI headquarters inBozeman, Montana. She says Mortenson and his family live in a modest homeand his charity is a small operation -- certainly not opulent. These arehardly the hallmarks of a swindler.I think the attacks may not be fair and would be very careful aboutjudging him before this is all resolved, Stilwill says.She notes that Mortenson is in extremely high demand as a speaker and ispulled in many different directions, traveling 140-150 days per year. Allof that travel and fundraising effort takes money to support building moreschools.But, she notes, Mortenson is also a shy person who has a reputation forbeing not that organized.Its often said about Greg that Id trust my life to him in a second butwouldnt ask him to set up the daily chore list, Stilwill says.Of note, Mortenson also has staunch defenders in the media, includingOutside magazine, which has vetted his work, and New York Times columnistNicholas Kristof. While some of his schools havent taken root, that maybe for reasons beyond anyones control: for instance, a lack of teachers,or parents who dont send their kids to school for fear of reprisals fromthe Taliban.The man himself is someone I still believe in, Stilwill says. I thinkhes a generous man whos given up a huge amount of his personal life tothis cause... I hope I wont be disappointed because I believe in hisultimate mission.Even Mortensons detractors agree that he has worked miracles establishinga significant number of schools in Central Asia, even if there are holesin his story.But at the very least, Mortenson seems to be guilty of going along withwhat might be generously called a tall tale.In his e-book, Krakauer -- who donated $75,000 of his own funds to CAI --rips Mortensons tale to shreds, backtracking in his footsteps andinterviewing close to 40 expedition members, porters, tribal chieftainsand other associates to debunk dozens of claims.For starters, Mortensons claim that he wandered out of the Himalayanmountains into a Pakistani village called Korphe after a failed attempt tosummit K2 in 1993 is a myth, Krakauer writes. Instead of staying in thevillage for an extended time recuperating, inspiring village children andfixing broken bones, Mortenson hopped into a jeep in another village andwent on a sightseeing tour of the region. He didnt visit Korphe until ayear later; nor did he place his hands on the shoulders of a village elderand promise to build a school there, which is a dramatic moment in thebook.Nor was he kidnapped by the Taliban for eight days as he has claimed inhis book and hundreds of interviews. Instead, Krakauer tracked down afriendly Pashtun scholar who showed Mortenson around his village inWaziristan; the man was shocked to find himself depicted as a kidnapperand jihadist and that no one ever drew guns on Mortenson or placed him inany kind of danger. He was in fact a guest of honor.The first eight chapters of Three Cups of Tea are an intricately wroughtwork of fiction presented as fact, Krakauer writes. ... The image ofMortenson that has been created for public consumption is an artifact bornof fantasy, audacity, and an apparently insatiable hunger for esteem.Its possible of course, that Mortenson was simply naive or ill-informedabout whats ethical in writing a memoir. His background is as a traumanurse and mountain climber, not a journalist. Hes currently said to bebackpedaling and shifting the blame to co-author David Oliver Relin forembroidering the truth. But that doesnt excuse the fact that he had fiveyears to set the record straight himself.

The Liars ClubReading Three Cups of Deceit, one cant help but wonder if memoirs ingeneral tend to be written by people who like to fudge the truth.After all, it was only a few years ago that the literary world was shakento its shelves with the news that James Freys true story, A MillionLittle Pieces, was a bald work of fiction. Frey claimed to have woken upon a plane, blind drunk and badly beaten, with no idea as to how he gotthere. I lift my hand to feel my face, he wrote. My front four teethare gone, I have a hole in my cheek, my nose is broken and my eyes areswollen nearly shut. Oh yeah, and his clothes were also drenched in acolorful mixture of spit, snot, urine, vomit and blood.Funny, but Freys literary agent, editor, publisher, Oprah Winfrey,legions of book reviewers and millions of gullible readers never thoughtto ask how a badly beaten, thoroughly stoned man managed to make it ontoan airplane instead of being handcuffed by security or rushed to ahospital.We readers wanted to believe Freys transparent lies because they made fora good story. We want to believe in the Gandhi-like Greg Mortenson becauseit made us feel that saints still walk the earth. Thats how con mensucceed -- they make their victims want to believe in them. Desperately.Some memoirists admit up front that they embroider the truth. Travelwriter Thomas Kohnstamm, who wrote Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?, a veryfunny book about his adventures in northeastern Brazil, said in hisintroduction that some of the people in his book were composite charactersand some situations were drawn from here and there in his life. His bookwas how he had made up some of his research as a writer of Lonely Planetguidebooks, so readers were forewarned that he wasnt quite legit.Similarly, Chelsea Handler has confessed that shes not really as loose asshe pretends to be in books such as My Horizontal Life: A Collection ofOne-Night Stands.Then there are sins of omission: travel writer Paul Theroux -- who musthave the longest-suffering wife in the world -- is forever coyly alludingto his sexual misadventures in both his fiction and nonfiction workswithout ever fully spilling the beans.The truest memoirs seem to be written by bad boy and bad girl types whowish to expel their demons by telling their sordid stories, straight andtrue: rockers Eric Clapton, David Lee Roth, Mackenzie Phillips, Slash andKeith Richards all come to mind with their excellent autobiographies.In any case, writing a memoir built on lies doesnt seem to hurt sales:Freys book got a nice bump when it was revealed to be a million littlelies; and last week Three Cups of Tea got a similar boost thanks to allthe bad publicity, celebrating its 220th week on the NYT bestseller list.What should be our guide in believing what a writer purports to be a truestory? Perhaps if it sounds too good to be true, then we can restassured its not.

(Downes own travel memoir, Planet Backpacker: The Good Life BummingAround the World, was published last week as an illustrated e-book onAmazon Kindle.)